Week 6 Lecture 9 - personality and mental health Flashcards
What is diathesis (diathesis-stress model)?
an inherent vulnerability to develop an illness.
What is stress (diathesis-stress model)?
increase the risk of developing an illness
What are diathesis-stress models?
focus on an interaction of environmental and genetic factors (stress and diathesis) that leads to developing e.g., mental health illnesses
True or false?
There are many potential relationships between diathesis and risk levels
True
relationships could be linear, exponential, step-change
True or false?
Diathesis and stress effects are likely to be simply additive
False
Diathesis and stress effects unlikely to be simply additive
Why is identifying personality diathesis difficult?
- There could be several diatheses per disorder
- There may be protective factors
- Diatheses may be differentially sensitive to certain types of (congruent) stressor –> the Specific Vulnerability Hypothesis (SVH)
Name some non-personality diathesis linked to depression
- Female gender
- Relative with depression
- Death of parent in childhood
- Lack of social support
Name some stressors linked to depression
Divorce, unemployment, physical illness
Name 4 personality diathesis that have been extensively researched and linked to depression
- high autonomy
- high dependency
- self-critical personality style
- pessimistic explanatory style
What is high autonomy?
- “compulsive self-reliance”
- aversion to being controlled by/ dependent on others
What stressor would someone high in autonomy be sensitive to (SVH)?
- indicators of personal failure
- e.g., poor exam performance, failure to get a promotion
What is a self-critical personality style?
- hold unreasonably high standards for self
- prone to punishing self-evaluations
What stressor would someone with a self-critical personality style be sensitive to (SVH)?
- negative life events that they feel responsible for
- e.g., accidents or mistakes
What is a pessimistic explanatory style?
- explain negative events according to stable and global causes
- feel unable to avoid negative events
What stressor would someone with a pessimistic explanatory style be sensitive to (SVH)?
- negative life events that could be attributed to stable/global causes
- e.g., failure
What is high dependency?
- “anxious attachment”
- exaggerated need for others’ guidance, nurturance and approval
- fears separation and abandonment
What stressor would someone with high dependency be sensitive to (SVH)?
- events related to interpersonal conflict, loss, rejection and separation
- e.g., relationship break-up
What are people with high autonomy and a self-critical personality style focussed on? What does this mean they are sensitive to?
- focussed on achievement
- sensitive to achievement-related stressful events
What is someone with high dependency focussed on? What does this mean they are sensitive to?
- focussed on relationships
- sensitive to reltionship-based stressful events
Is there evidence to support the Specific Vulnerability Hypothesis?
Abela et al. (2012):
- Mixed results in tests of this hypothesis
Three possible causes of inconsistencies:
- Little focus on other risk and protective factors (e.g. self-esteem).
- Too much focus on individual stress level relative to group –> idiographic approach would be better
- Researcher cannot classify stressful events for each individual (differences in interpretation, plus ‘spill over’ effects.)
A study by Abela et al. (2012) tried to address the issues of the SVH previously highlighted
They recruited 140 children who had at least 1 parent with a history of depression and had them complete multiple measures at baseline and them followed up over a 1 year period (every 6 weeks via phone interviews)
The study focussed on dependency and self-criticalness
What did their analysis aim to determine?
- The ability of Dependency and Self-Crit to predict depression
- The effect of increased amount of total stress (not congruence).
- The role of self-esteem as a protective factor.
A study by Abela et al. (2012) tried to address the issues of the SVH previously highlighted
They recruited 140 children who had at least 1 parent with a history of depression and had them complete multiple measures at baseline and them followed up over a 1 year period (every 6 weeks via phone interviews)
The study focussed on dependency and self-criticalness
What did they find?
- No evidence that self-criticism acts as a diathesis.
- Diathesis-stress effects apparent for Dependency.
- Dependency acts as a diathesis, but is buffered by protective effects of self-esteem.
What studies show that Schizotypy confirms a vulnerability to Sz?
Kwapil et al. (2013):
- 534 undergrads took the Wisconsin Schizotypy Scales which broke schizotypy down into positive (e.g., perceptual aberration, magical ideation) and negative (physical and social anhedonia)
- positive and negative Schiz –> Sz-spectrum disorders
- positive Schiz –> mood and substance abuse
- negative Schiz –> Schizoid traits and lower reltionship closeness
Halsam (2009):
- looked at specific vulnerabilitis in Schiz (SVH)
- positive Schiz more vulnerable to chatic envs. e.g., abuse, neglect
- negative Schiz more vulnerable to birth complications e.g., physical, biological stressors
High levels of Schizotypy have been linked to psychosis but what else have they been linked to?
creativity
What evidence is there that schizotypy is linked to creativity?
Ando, Claridge & Clark (2014):
Online schizotypy scales completed by:
- Comedians (N=523)
- Actors (N=364)
- Compared with existing ‘normal’ groups.
- Actors and comedians scored higher than normal controls on most subscales.
- Comedians > actors for three subscales
Mason, Hort and Woo (2015):
- Online recruitment of 294 poets.
- Compared with existing ‘normal’ groups.
- 18.37% met diagnostic criteria for self-reported bipolar (cf population level: 3.7%)
- Highest levels of schizotypy for ‘avant-garde’ poets
